


[fic] The Light in Me

by silly_cleo



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Awkwardness, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, F/F, Femslash, Friends to Lovers, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-08
Updated: 2018-10-08
Packaged: 2019-07-28 08:46:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,282
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16238162
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/silly_cleo/pseuds/silly_cleo
Summary: “Yashaaa! What are you doing up there?”She considers whether not answering will make Jester give up and go away. She then considers whether that’s even what she actually wants right now.





	[fic] The Light in Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Rosage](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rosage/gifts).



Yasha is crouched in the Mystake’s crow’s nest, looking out across the water. She knows other people are on watch right now, people she trusts more than not, but she doesn’t feel like sleeping, and there’s something nice about scanning the horizon, idly on the lookout for a tell-tale gathering of clouds.

“Yashaaa! What are you doing up there?”

She considers whether not answering will make Jester give up and go away. She then considers whether that’s what she even wants right now. She considered when that even became something that needed considering. There’s quite a long pause while she considers all these things, which might resolve the issue before she has to come to a decision either way.

“Thinking,” she calls down, before she’s consciously arrived at any firm conclusions.

“Do you want some company?”

The next pause as she considers further is almost as long, and patience is certainly not one of Jester’s big, good things. She figures Jester must be about halfway up the mast when she calls down, slightly redundantly, “Sure.”

Before long a pair of blue hands appear on the railing and Jester is hauling herself into the crow’s nest. There isn’t really space for a second person up here but Jester squishes in beside her anyway. Yasha shuffles a bit to make room, and they sit sandwiched next to each other. She can feel Jester pressed into her side from shoulder to knee, warm and solid and vibrant. Their elbows jostle a bit and it’s much closer than she’d normally be comfortable sitting with… pretty much anyone, but it’s kind of nice.

“So what were you thinking about?”

She shrugs.

“Oh, I don’t know. Not much, honestly. The view is nice.” She gestures vaguely out at the water.

“It _is_ very beautiful. You know, I really like it up here. It’s so high up, and you can see _everything_.”

Jester sighs and rests her head on Yasha’s shoulder. Yasha stiffens slightly. Jester either doesn’t notice, or if she does, she doesn’t seem to mind.

“Jester? Were you looking for me for any particular reason?”

“Not really. I was just looking for some company, and it looked like fun up here.”

“Fair enough.” She consciously drops her shoulders, letting out a big sigh of her own in the process. This is actually not so bad. If she’s honest, the extra body heat is not entirely unwelcome. The one downside to sitting up here was it hasn’t been the warmest perch. She wasn’t uncomfortably cold on her own by any means, this far south it’s still much warmer than she’s used, but it’s still night on the open water. 

The silence stretches longer than she would have expected of Jester. She even begins to wonder if she’s fallen asleep, and what the best way to handle that might be if so. She tries to subtly get a look down at Jester’s face to work out whether her eyes are open or not but she can’t really see much apart from horns and hair. Damn. It’s probably fine to just ask her, right?

“Jester?”

“Hm?”

“Oh. Nothing. Just checking you hadn’t fallen asleep.”

“No, I was just thinking. That’s one nice thing about being on the ocean, you, know? it’s a lot harder for something like what happened with…with the Iron Shepherds to happen again.”

There’s a short pause before Jester continues, “I suppose there’s other things that could happen though.”

“Well, that’s always going to be true.” The words are out of her mouth before it occurs to her that’s probably not a very helpful thing to say. Why in all the gods’ names isn’t Jester talking about this with _anyone else_?

“I guess…” There’s a definite wobble in Jester’s voice now, which sounds like she might be wondering the exact same thing. Yasha sighs. Well. She might not be the best at this sort of thing by any stretch of the imagination but she’s the person who’s here, and she’s hopefully better than noone. She gives Jester what she hopes is a friendly elbow dig to the ribs while she scrabbles about frantically for something to say that will be both true and comforting.

“Well, look. Our friends had our backs that time, right? And it’s not the first time either. So maybe that’s more comfort than just being able to see what’s coming. Not that that’s not a good thing too.” She trails off awkwardly, wondering how much she believes her own words.

“I guess…” Jester says again, but the wobble is gone this time, and Yasha’s going to call that a win. 

There’s another short pause in the conversation, in which Yasha painstakingly dissects every word out of her mouth so far and finds several better things she could have said instead.

“Yasha…do you miss Molly?” Not for the first time, she wonders what the internal logic there is from one of Jester’s thoughts to the next, or whether that logic exists at all. 

“Of course I do. I don’t know, though, it’s strange, but sometimes I almost forget that he’s dead, because I’m not with him all the time anyway, you know? This last...trip, I’d catch myself thinking he was just here with all of you and then I’d remember. It…It’s starting to feel more real now that we’ve all crossed paths again, and he’s still not here.”

“I’ve never known someone who’s died before. Not that I was close to, I mean. I miss him a lot too, and I don’t like how it makes me feel.” Jester wriggles her shoulders and makes a weird sort of gesture with her hand, as if she could actually push her feelings away.

“I don’t really know what to do with it either. But…I don’t think anyone does, really? Maybe…maybe we can all figure it out together, though?”

Jester sniffs once, hard, and scrubs at her eyes, before bouncing up to face Yasha and kiss her soundly on the cheek. Or, well, more the corner of the mouth, really, Yasha’s not sure if her aim is off from sitting up so fast or if it was deliberate. Jester pulls back, studying the expression on Yasha’s face intently, a small smile playing on her lips, her eyes sparkling with equal parts tears and mischief. Yasha doesn’t know what Jester’s looking for there, doesn’t even know what she wants her to find, but whatever it is causes Jester to lean in, bridging the gap between them, and kiss Yasha full on the lips. Acting purely on instinct, Yasha freezes. Oh. Oh, wait, that’s… That’s...really nice, actually. It would definitely be OK if Jester wanted to keep doing that. 

Belatedly, she realizes she should probably tell Jester as much before she gets the wrong idea and stops, but following on from that is the truly inspired thought, potentially divinely so, even, that she could just _show_ her instead. Yasha’s always been much better with actions than words, anyway. With that, she twists around sharply to look at Jester and takes her face in her hands. Jester, who had stopped kissing her and started to pull away, squeaks, sounding surprised but not unhappy about this development. Without stopping to think about it too hard, Yasha closes the distance between them this time. Jester’s lips are soft and warm and taste just a tiny bit like the sea.

Yup, Yasha would very much be in favor of getting to do this a whole lot more. There should probably be a conversation about that at some point, but there are definitely more interesting things they could be doing with their mouths for the time being.


End file.
